Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno (1902 1997), a black woman known as Reyita, recounts her life in Cuba over the span of ninety years. Reyita s voice is at once dignified, warm, defiant, strong, poetic, principled, and intelligent. Her story as told to and recorded by her daughter Daisy Castillo begins in Africa with her own grandmother s abduction by slave-traders and continues through a century of experiences with prejudice, struggle, and change in Cuba for Reyita and her numerous family members.
Sensitive to and deeply knowledgeable of the systemic causes and consequences of poverty,...